The Free Press
On Tuesday morning, around 6 a.m., Andrei, who lives in the Moscow suburbs, awoke to the sound of war crashing through his window. First, he heard what sounded like a shot—that was the Russian air defense system kicking in. The same sound rang out again. Then a whistling dive, the unmistakable sound of something mechanical, something deliberate, slicing through the sky. The explosion came next.
A drone had hit his home.
“I ran to the window,” said Andrei, who requested anonymity to discuss the incident with the Western media. “The car outside was on fire. It looked like the roof was on fire too. I grabbed my dog and ran.”
He didn’t take the front door—it was too dangerous; he was afraid the car would explode at any moment. Instead, he slipped through the back, into the garden, and took stock of the damage. There were pieces of drone debris scattered across the yard. His parents’ house, which stood on the same property, had barely escaped the flames. His own house was engulfed. The roof collapsed. Inside, everything he owned was destroyed, if not by the fire, then by the water that came later from the firefighters’ hoses.
Moscow has been hit before—two drones were shot down over the Kremlin in 2023, and a handful more caused some “minor damage,” including striking a building in the financial district, later that year. But this attack, given its sheer scale, felt different.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, it had intercepted 343 drones overnight. They had exploded across 10 regions, including 91 aimed at Moscow and its suburbs. At least three people were killed and 18 more wounded, including three children, officials said.
“I’ve heard of drone strikes [in Moscow] before,” Andrei said. “But this one hit my home. Literally, almost the room where I was sleeping.”
The drone barrage came just hours before U.S. and Ukrainian officials met in Saudi Arabia for their first official talks since last month’s Oval Office debacle. After more than three hours behind closed doors, Ukraine has agreed to an immediate 30-day ceasefire negotiated by the U.S., the two countries said in a joint statement. The ceasefire, however, hinges on Russia accepting the plan. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, plans to visit Moscow later this week for a meeting with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine, though, was eager to send a message to Putin that despite its willingness to lay down its arms, the war was far from settled.
Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, called today’s massive drone strike “an additional signal to Putin” about the ceasefire.
Specifically, that Putin “should also be interested in a ceasefire from the air,” he said in a video on his YouTube channel. “Drones can fly around Moscow en masse, constantly.”
For some Muscovites, it was the first time the war felt real.
“In Moscow, you don’t really encounter what war looks like,” a young woman named Sasha told The Free Press. “I can watch the war if I choose to—whenever I want—and I do so through a screen.”
For many Muscovites, that was the case on Tuesday as well. At least half a dozen Moscow residents told The Free Press they only learned about it from media reports, adding that the vast majority of the damage occurred in the suburbs.
“I woke up, checked my phone, and the first thing I saw was my friend’s post,” said Sasha. It read: “I woke up to an explosion. A drone crashed near my house, and for an hour I kept hearing more explosions, farther away.”
Though there were no explosions near her, Sasha was nonetheless shaken, worried for her friend. One photo she saw online stuck with her—a row of cars reduced to charred metal frames in a parking lot.
“It’s unsettling and scary, because today they reached Domodedovo, and tomorrow they could reach your own home,” said Sophie Porter, another Moscow resident. (Domodedovo is the suburb that took the brunt of the barrage.)
“I wouldn’t call this fear something new,” she told The Free Press. “I think it’s been there since that time a drone reached the Kremlin. Over time, the fear dulls, but then a new wave hits with renewed intensity—especially now, since it seems like there haven’t been this many casualties before.”
When I reached the friend Sasha had been worried about, he seemed to accept the attack with equanimity. “At first, yeah, it was a bit nerve-wracking,” he said. “There were a lot of strikes in Vidnoye [city in Moscow Oblast]—that’s literally just across the field and road from my house. But then I thought, well, whatever, I’m on the first floor, I should be fine. Worst case, maybe some shrapnel.” So he closed the curtains and went back to sleep.
Sasha, while shaken, admitted the incident is unlikely to have much impact on her daily life either. Like many in Moscow, she reminded herself that she was still far from the front lines.
“Honestly, a couple of damaged cars is nothing compared to destroyed cities or people dying,” she said, referring to the plight of the Ukrainians. “I think I’ve developed some kind of fatalism. Ukraine has the right to strike back.”
Once upon a time, honorable men went to the gulag for refusing to repeat the Kremlin’s lies; now an American president is telling them for free. In the latest episode of Breaking History, Eli Lake takes us back to the Cold War and President Reagan’s support of dissidents.